UMass Dartmouth doctoral student to travel to Brazil for a year on a Fulbright

Monday

Dec 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM

DARTMOUTH — UMass Dartmouth doctoral student Serena Rivera couldn't wait to get back to Brazil after falling for the South American country during a study tour in 2008.

MATT CAMARA

DARTMOUTH — UMass Dartmouth doctoral student Serena Rivera couldn't wait to get back to Brazil after falling for the South American country during a study tour in 2008.

"I completely fell in love with the culture, the food, the music. ... The people were so welcoming," said Rivera, a student in the university's Luso-Afro-Brazilian Ph.D. program.

Four years later, Rivera is preparing to head back south of the equator on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant, one of only a handful awarded this year.

Rivera, a New Bedford resident, snagged one of just 30 ETA Fulbright grants after competing with a pool of 200 candidates, according to a UMass Dartmouth news release.

The Fulbright program, established in 1946 under legislation introduced by then-Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Arkansas, aims to promote mutual understanding between countries by sending American scholars abroad and supporting visiting scholars.

After an orientation with her fellow Brazil Fulbrighters in Sao Paulo in February, Rivera will begin working at the Universidade Estadual de Londrina, a university in the southern part of the country. At Londrina, Rivera will teach English and organize community events related to American culture, she said.

A New Jersey native with a Puerto Rican father, Rivera had zero experience with the Portuguese language until the 2008 study tour she attended while an anthropology undergraduate at Fordham University in New York.

Going on the tour turned out to be a spur-of-the-moment decision in the wake of her father's unexpected death, Rivera said.

"I just needed a dramatic change in my life or I was going to drop out of college," she said.

A Fordham professor recommended UMass Dartmouth's graduate program in Portuguese when Rivera returned to the U.S.

Faculty at UMass Dartmouth's Portuguese department said they hope Rivera's Fulbright award will encourage other students to apply for the extremely competitive grants.

"I think sometimes there is a lack of confidence" at UMass Dartmouth, said Portuguese professor Anna Klobucka. "I hope this says that we have strong students who can compete for the most prestigious awards."

The grant provides Rivera with funding for a year in Brazil and she said her goal in applying was to help the country that welcomed her as she struggled with the loss of her father.